THE WAY innocent children turn into self-centred adults is a dilemma for every parent.

THE WAY innocent children turn into self-centred adults is a dilemma for every parent.

You can experience the same effect watching Jamie Bell in Hallam Foe, a 'not so nice and sleazy does it' coming-ofage drama.

This is a proper British movie with echoes of Peeping Tom crossed with Dirty Pretty Things. Billingham-born Bell is still best known for playing Billy

Elliot, the skinny boy who wanted to dance back in 2000.

But now he's getting his still impressively-gymnastic kicks by crawling across an Edinburgh rooftop.

And by peering through a skylight while his blonde hotel boss, Kate, has sex.

What really gives this creepy film an edge is that Kate looks like his mother, whose suspicious death turned Hallam into a lofty spy in the first place.

Based on a novel by Peter Jinks, an old friend of director David Mackenzie (Young Adam), Hallam Foe is an unflinching 96-minute exploration of how adolescents can be driven to extremes when their sex drive combines with teenage grief.

With Ciaran Hinds as Hallam's father Julius and and Claire Forlani playing his potentially evil stepmother, Verity, there's so much more than popcorn for adult cinemagoers to chew on here at Cineworld, Broad St.